1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power converter for generating variable-frequency power from electric power of AC power source.
2. Description of the Related Art
An inverter apparatus is widely used as a power converter for driving AC motors and, for large capacity use in particular, three level inverter apparatus is generally utilized.
A typical inverter apparatus comprises a DC portion of a converter for converting AC power source power into DC power, a DC portion of an inverter for converting DC power into AC power, and a DC bus of a DC link portion which interconnects the former two portions. The DC portion of the converter and that of the inverter have their respective smoothing capacitors, in such a way that if a resonance frequency of a resonance circuit constituted by capacitance of these two smoothing capacitors and inductance of the DC bus approaches a switching frequency of the converter or the inverter, a large resonance current flows through the resonance circuit, thus generating heat by the DC bus and the smoothing capacitors. To prevent such heating, a three level inverter apparatus described for example in Japanese Patent Publication No. 18435/1999 has such a configuration that the PWM switching frequency of its converter and inverter is set at not more than 1/ 2 of the primary resonance frequency of its DC link portion. Also, Japanese Patent Publication No. 46481/1999 describes such a configuration of a parallel multiple inverter apparatus in which a plurality of inverters is interconnected by a DC circuit that a resonance current may be suppressed by inserting a dumping resistor to both a positive-polarity potential bus and a negative-polarity potential bus of the three DC buses.
In the case of a large capacity inverter apparatus, the capacitance of its smoothing capacitor becomes large as well as the size of the apparatus itself, with a resultant increase in the magnitude of the inductance of the DC bus, thus decreasing the resonance frequency of the DC bus. In such a case, a prior art described in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Publication No. 18435/1999 needs to decrease the PWM switching frequency correspondingly, which, however, distorts the output waveform of the inverter, thus problematically increasing vibration of the load motor.
Also, another prior art described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 46481/1999 has such a problem that a current flowing through resistors inserted to the positive-polarity and negative-polarity potential buses brings about a large loss, thus decreasing the conversion efficiency of the inverter apparatus.